Dr. Larry Erickson is a Professor of Chemical Engineering and Director of the Center for Hazardous Substance Research at Kansas State University. He got his B.S. degree in 1960 and Ph.D. in 1964 from Kansas State and has been on the faculty since then. He was a National Defense Education Act Fellow for his graduate studies. This graduate fellowship is no longer funded by the Government, but, at the time, it was the most prestigious honor a graduate student could receive. In 2001, he received a U.S. Department of Defense Grant for Establishment of the Non-Lethal Environmental Evaluation and Remediation Center and, since then, has been the Center's Director.

Dr. Erickson has dedicated his professional career to advancing the use of chemical engineering principles in environmental problems. He has published 392 research papers. He had advised nearly 60 graduate students and taught over 1000 undergraduate students. He has obtained funding for the Hazardous Substance Research Center of over $30 million. He has presented papers or lectured in Greece, Canada, Yugoslavia, Japan, Czechoslovakia, Germany, the USSR, Malaysia, Mexico, Latvia, and Ecuador. He has received many honors, including being named Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers in 2001. Phi Kappa Phi is honored to present him with the Phi Kappa Phi Scholar Award.